How to live a Fully Mission-Capable Life

During my tenure in the Air Force I served as an Aircraft Maintenance Officer. My job was to ensure the fighter jets were in a Fully Mission Capable (FMC) status in order to fulfill the daily flying schedule. When the jets landed if there had encountered any type of problem they would be placed in a Non Mission Capable (NMC) status. The technicians were dispatched to trouble shoot the problem. When we briefed the status of the jets at our daily production meetings, we would review the corrective action by stating which part we had R2’Ed (pronounced “R” squared, short for Remove and Replace). In civilian terms; out with bad, in with the good.

If only life were so simple. If we could just take bad experience, poor decisions, and missed opportunities and totally eradicate them from our memory banks only to replace them with new and improved life choices wouldn’t it be grand! But unfortunately humans aren’t built that way. Wounds give way to scars but they are still visible. And we have this terrible compulsion to continuously turn ourselves into NMC status by living in the past.

But all is not lost. You can still soar with the eagles and slip the surly bonds of Earth; you just have to be a bit more creative about it. So since it’s impossible to truly Remove and Replace anything that’s entered our lives because it’s all made some type of a imprint on us, why not pull some of these corrective actions out of your tool box...

Renew and Replace: By surrounding yourself with positive people and reading edifying and educational material, you can actually renew your spirit and attitude and replace that old sour one that was dragging you down. Get a lock on every negative thought and shoot it down!  Once the old way of thinking has crashed and burned, replace it with action that generates solutions, not excuses. As Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we use when we created them.”

Renovate and Replace: Once we hit the age of accountability, everything in our lives is there as a result of our choices, whether it’s the state of our bodies, our homes, our finances, or our relationships. If you make small changes on a repeated basis, eventually you are going to have a complete renovation. Renovation means you keep the DNA and work to restore it to its natural beauty and splendor. As Jack Dixon said, “If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.”

Regain and Replace: Many of us have made choices from which the consequences are irreparable. That’s okay. Poor decisions do not have to sentence you to a poor life. You can regain your reputation, your job, your family, your self-respect, if you are willing to put some grease and sweat equity behind it. Read the manuals and instructions on how to live a tremendous life. There are countless people who have gone what you’ve gone through and worse and have recorded their struggles to victory so others may do the same. As Zig Ziglar said, “Failure doesn’t mean you are a failure, it just means you haven’t succeeded yet.

So there you have it. Once you return yourself to Fully Mission Capable status with these three sure fire fixes, you really will see that the sky’s the limit!